Monuments To Impermanence

All winter, I take pictures of snow creations, documenting the construction and the gradual demise of these monuments to impermenence. If taking pictures of snowmen has taught me anything, it's that people regard you as highly suspicious for taking pictures of snowmen. Some will ask what you're doing, others tell you to get away from their snow property. It's strange how possessive people can be over flakes of solidified water...

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

snow buddha

This happy guy was located only a few doors down from the Calvinesque display pictured two posts below. This is obviously a creative neighborhood, one that I'll have to make sure to check after every snowfall. At least until the police tell me to stop.

Our whole town is sprinkled with pockets of creative people, mixed into the upper-lower-middle class types and the red-blooded blue collared midwestern folk. Our household, plus our neighbor, who is a musician, make up the creative, or perhaps more accurately described as bohemian, part of our 'hood. Most of the other people work at the nearby prison or window factory or drive trucks for a living.

Buddah says, "Possessions are fleeting. Soon all will melt away like so much snow."Yeah, he can be buzz-kill....

Friday, January 06, 2006

Look how many nuts I can fit in my mouth!!!

I've never seen the mouth of a snowman constructed completely out of peanuts...they must've been leftover from recent holiday parties. As far as snowmen go, this one is pretty unremarkable, even in today's world creativity-surpressed children. Even the squirrels were so unimpressed that they left his mouthful of booty unlooted.

As I was walking back to the car, after taking the final picture of this man-o-snow, a car pulled up in front of the house. A man got out and eyed me suspiciously as I left. He then walked right up to the snowman and carefully inspected him, then looked at me and Sy as we drove off. He had a sort of "why the hell are you taking a picture of that piece of crap snowman?"look. I'm pretty sure he wrote down our license plate.

Monday, January 02, 2006

Meet Tiny Tim...

A few days ago (I think it was December 29th) it snew, or snowed, whichever you prefer. It was a nice heavy, wet snow, excellent for packing...sort of. It was a very weird snow, great for making snowballs, but for some reason it would not stick to itself when it was rolled along the ground. Therefore, I had to awkwardly pack it into small spherish shapes, leaving me with a shorty snowman, maybe two feet tall. You can get a sense of how tall it is from the minidaschund inspecting it. I thought it might be easy to document his life and eventual demise without missing any major stages, because I would see him every day. My son named him Tiny Tim.

Here we've added a combover to completely disintegrate any shreds of dignity he may have remaining.

January 2nd: It's slightly above freezing today, and all the snow that was sitting on the branches over Tiny Tim is melting, raining down a slow mortality. You can see he's already lost his eye to the ravages of global warming, and his mouth is drooping alarmingly, like he had a stroke or something. I fear he's not long for this world...check back for updates, and keep him in your prayers.